[Pkg-electronics-devel] Bug#985578: arduino-core-avr: Flashing bootloader fails due to invalid size

[Gregor Riepl]

Package: arduino-core-avr
Version: 1.8.3+dfsg1-1
Severity: important
X-Debbugs-Cc: onitake at gmail.com

Dear Maintainer,

The Arduino bootloader binaries shipped in Debian cannot be flashed to Arduino
devices, because they are too big. I tested only with the Arduino Uno, but
others may be affected as well.

Trying to flash leads to the following error:

$ /usr/bin/avrdude -v -patmega328p -cusbtiny
-Uflash:w:/usr/share/arduino/hardware/arduino/avr/bootloaders/optiboot/optiboot_atmega328.hex:i

avrdude: Device signature = 0x1e950f (probably m328p)
avrdude: NOTE: "flash" memory has been specified, an erase cycle will be
performed
         To disable this feature, specify the -D option.
avrdude: erasing chip
avrdude: Using SCK period of 10 usec
avrdude: reading input file
"/usr/share/arduino/hardware/arduino/avr/bootloaders/optiboot/optiboot_atmega328.hex"
avrdude: ERROR: address 0x8010 out of range at line 33 of
/usr/share/arduino/hardware/arduino/avr/bootloaders/optiboot/optiboot_atmega328.hex
avrdude: read from file
'/usr/share/arduino/hardware/arduino/avr/bootloaders/optiboot/optiboot_atmega328.hex'
failed

Running avr-size on this file returns:

avr-size
/usr/share/arduino/hardware/arduino/avr/bootloaders/optiboot/optiboot_atmega328.hex
   text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
      0     534       0     534     216
/usr/share/arduino/hardware/arduino/avr/bootloaders/optiboot/optiboot_atmega328.hex

The maximum size for the Arduino Uno bootloader is 512 bytes, at least that's
what the boards.txt has configured by default. Larger loaders are possible, but
require manual modifications of the fuse bits, the Arduino board configuration
and the offsets in the .hex file.

Please ensure that this bootloader does not exceed 512 bytes when building the
package. It's likely that the increase in size was caused by a recently updated
avr-gcc. I don't know if there are any compiler options or patches to reduce
the size to less than 512 bytes again. As a workaround, it may be possible to
set the start address to 0x7c00 (from 0x7e00) and change the sizes and fuse
bits in boards.txt to accommodate the larger bootloader.

Thank you.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: bullseye/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (900, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'testing-
debug'), (300, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental-debug'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 5.10.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU threads)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_USER, TAINT_WARN
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8),
LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages arduino-core-avr depends on:
ii  avr-libc  1:2.0.0+Atmel3.6.2-1.1
ii  gcc-avr   1:5.4.0+Atmel3.6.2-1+b1

arduino-core-avr recommends no packages.

arduino-core-avr suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information

-- debsums errors found: